


How to be the Batman

by jerseydevious



Series: Earth-JD [4]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, because i am that bitch, ruthlessly based on an old batman annual, the joe chill of good writing declared me an enemy of the state and murdered me at quiznos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 00:13:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14320173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: One of Jervis Tetch's experimental VR helmets misfires, and Batman loses his memories of being Batman. It's up to Robin to teach him how.





	1. DROOLD GIVV

**Author's Note:**

> God hecking bless @audreycritter, she is my cheerleader, my superbro, my _actual_ Superman, thank you for being so wonderful Audrey! For anyone reading this who isn't familiar with her, go check her AO3 now. She's the reason you don't have to worry about this fic being abandoned and never updating, because guess what! Every last word is written! It's all done! 100% complete!
> 
> I'm addicted to comic allusions, tbh. This is filled with allusions to the comics, and if you can pick them all out I'll love you forever, and is actually a repurposed plot from an old Batman annual. It serves my need to add some foundation to Earth-JD very nicely.

It was easier to fit neatly into Gotham’s jagged edges at night, when the long shadows stretched across the city like an oil spill, broken only by the cast of flickering lights from convenience stores and bars and strip clubs and casinos. The day was not so simple. During the day, Gotham’s emergent layer, the gleaming glass towers of a newer age, were picked over by thousands of eyes at any given moment; Gotham’s canopy, the tall spires and delicate arches and flying buttresses of Pinkney’s Gothic love, were always at attention; Gotham’s understory, squared out by commercial apartments and hotels and, at least in East End, casinos, were forested with people; and Gotham’s floor, its streets and hole-in-the-walls, were a dense and constant migration of onlookers. No layer of the city was left unturned; Gotham’s spectacle always had an audience. So the Batman hid in the aquifers.

 

 _“He’s still refusing to release the hostages,”_ Harvey Bullock said. Bullock’s voice was easy to make out, through the listening device; it was low and had a tone of anger to it, a rasp to it, that made it unique.

 

Gordon’s voice was softer, and took concentration, but Bruce could hear what he said next fairly clearly: _“Dammit.”_

 

_“... storm the place?”_

 

 _“Can’t,”_ Gordon said. A burst of static blotted his next words, and then: _“... kill them… push of a damn button.”_

 

_“You… think he’s… rewired...possible?”_

 

_“If you’re… enough.”_

 

Bruce pulled the foam headphones off his ears, folded them back into the box, and tucked the receiver on top. He wrapped an arm around the ladder to hold himself still while he slid the box back into his belt and latched the compartment, and then he dropped to the floor with a splash. It was convenient that the officers had been standing near enough a manhole that Bruce could set the bat-ears to their approximate distance and gather information; but convenience was a luxury, and in the future, Bruce would have to program the bat-ears to be able to listen at longer distances, with less distortion from ambient sound. If he wrapped this up soon enough, he could do it in the handful of hours he had before his fourteen-year-old got home from school.

 

He’d left the disguises he’d picked in a bag hanging on a batarang, just below the manhole where he’d left his disguise car—an ‘88 Pontiac Sunbird that made him wince every time he thought about it—parked. He’d bought it under the identity he was using from a particularly sleazy dealer, and he idly hoped he’d have the chance to destroy it somehow. He left his suit on beneath the FBI windbreaker, tucking his gauntlets into his belt. He left his hands unconvered, as the pale, scarred spiders they were. It was too distinctive of Bruce Wayne to be covering his hands with gloves. The combination of the utility belt and the cape tucked into the jacket gave him a bit of a paunch, which would offer him a better disguise. He pulled the cowl down and tucked it into the back of the jacket, slung a false badge around his neck, pulled a cap down low over his face; then, he slid on a pair of aviators, and tacked on a burly, thick mustache, and crawled out of the sewer.

 

It was a quick, short drive to the shadow of the Wayne Enterprises building. The Pontiac had a problem with the breaks, which Bruce never fixed because he was convinced the Pontiac was the worst piece of engineering he’d ever seen, and would have no part in it. As it were, it rolled dangerously close to one of the squad cars before it finally felt up to the task of stopping. Bruce hopped out, flashing his badge, settling into the frustrated walk of a man who thought the world was moving far too slowly for his taste. Everyone listened to a man who knew what he was doing, and every man who knew what he was doing was perplexed as to why the clock never ticked nor tocked a moment faster.

 

“Goodwin, FBI,” he said, marching over to Gordon, who was startled out of a heated whisper-conversation with Bullock. “I’m going in, Mr. Commissioner.”

 

Gordon’s mouth, and fluffy ginger mustache, which far outdid Bruce’s fake one, twisted. He squinted. “Agent Goodwin?”

 

“Robert Goodwin,” Bruce clarified, sticking his thumbs in his belt loops. He leaned his shoulders back. “I’ll be in an’ out, won’t be noticed.” He hadn’t tried a Southern accent on for a while. He wasn’t used to the drawl.

 

Gordon wrinkled his nose. The wind—it was a breezy, overcast day—blew at his coarse hair, rumpling it, and Gordon patted it down furiously. “What are you waiting for? My _permission?”_ Gordon spat the word like it was poison. Bruce already knew of his distaste for the FBI—or, rather, anyone that came between him and his city.

 

“Thought you should know, Mr. Commissioner.”

 

“It’s Gordon,” Gordon hissed.

 

 _“Aw_ -right, Gordon.”

 

 _“Commissioner_ Gordon.”

 

“I hear ya, Mr. Commissioner Gordon.”

 

Gordon waved him away with a frustrated growl, raising a styrofoam cup of coffee to his lips. Bruce smothered a snicker at the disgruntled tilt of his brows.

 

He jogged to the mouth of the building, around a massive fountain WE had commissioned a local sculpteur a year ago to create. The sculpteur had carved what he called ‘an image of Gotham City,’ which turned out to be a tumbling, marble cast of a massive colony of bats, because of course it was. They dribbled water from their mouths, which in turn wound its way through the twists and turns of ears and wings and down to the pool below.

 

WayneTech R&D lived in two floors of the massive Wayne Enterprises skyscraper. The walls of the building itself were glass, and if the clouds had leaked a drop more sun the building would have been impossible to look at. His father’s name stood tall and broad on the front in big, black letters that, at night, were lit from behind by white lights. It was the only shred of black on the building; the designer had been a fan of white marble. Bruce found it disconcerting.

 

Bruce moved quickly from the small outcropping of houseplants, to behind the desk, to the stairwell—no CCTV in the stairwell, at least—and he ditched his disguise there, leaving it smoldering from a quick glance with a lighter. They’d find the ash on the concrete later.

 

He aimed his grapple two staircases up, and fired, swinging himself over the railing. He knew from the VR briefing he’d had weeks ago with Lucius that Tetch would be in Room 1, directly across the hall—Tetch would know he was coming a second before he arrived—there was no element of surprise. _But,_ Bruce thought, as one hand pulled three batarangs from his belt in the same instance he kicked open the lab room door, _there is always—_

 

—one batarang landed between Tetch’s fingers and the gun he was reaching for, and the other two, the lights _—the fear._

 

“Make one move and it’ll be your last,” Bruce snarled into the sudden darkness. He stalked forward; the civilians were lined against the walls, silver headsets with purple and teal lights humming harshly. Ten. He put himself between them and Tetch.

 

Tetch rubbed the hand Bruce had nearly taken off. “Bat…. man. Batman.” He trailed off into a high-pitched giggle. _“Batman!_ How good it is to see you, my-oh- _my._ I never thought I would. Much less give you the chance to see these, my beautiful handiwork! If only… you hadn’t… cut out the light…”

 

Nervous babbling. Tetch wasn’t thinking clearly. “Let them go, Jervis,” Bruce said, stepping forward, slowly, like a handler approaching a big cat. “You don’t have to do this.”

 

“No, no!” Tetch shrieked. “I want the money, you pest! I want the money! I deserve it! Can’t you see what I did? Look at them, all of them, they’re _dreaming!”_

 

He’d studied what little background he could pull together in a hurry on Tetch; talented, gifted neuroscientist, a clean record, save for a bombing at his school when he was a child. The bombing had never been connected to Tetch—there was no discernible evidence that it could have been Tetch at all.

 

“Disable the helmets, Jervis.”

 

Bruce questioned that, now.

 

“Fox—sly, sly Fox—he wanted virtual reality helmets, to train police officers. Of all the things—stop coming after me! I have the remote in my hand, if I press the kill switch they all die, pest! There, that’s a good bat, that’s a good one.” Tetch paced behind the desk, tossing the remote from hand-to-hand. Bruce couldn’t risk destroying the remote, even if Tetch was bluffing—ten lives. Ten lives. “I thought, why prepare for reality, when you can escape it? To sleep, perchance to dream… why not fall down the rabbit hole, Batman?”

 

Tetch threw a glance at him, and giggled. “Well. I think _you’re_ already there. Don’t you understand? They dream. Their world is peaceful. Their world is so much better now. I’ve sold them my contraptions, my mechanical wonders. And now I would like payment.”

 

Tetch’s wild behavior, his laughter, it was beyond Bruce. It was best to keep him talking, to find a hole to worm his way into, a weakness to dig his teeth into. He was consciously aware of the ten participants, each crowned by a dream. They didn’t have much time.

 

“How.”

 

Tetch froze. “What do you mean, _how?”_

 

“How are they sleeping. How did you do it.”

 

Tetch clapped his hands. “I knew it! I knew you’d understand! I had a theory that beneath those wings you’d get it, I knew. Who wants to exist, Batman? Existence doesn’t want to exist! Existence wants to dream! Endlessly. What about a better world, Batman? Haven’t you ever wanted a better world?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Tetch reached for the helmet on his desk. There was a yellow post-it note tacked to the front, “DRINK ME,” scrawled on it. “Try it, try it! You have to _try it!”_

“One condition.”

 

A gamble. One hell of a gamble. But he wasn’t risking ten lives to wrestle with Tetch.

 

Tetch’s eyes shown with excitement. “Anything. _Oho!_ Anything for someone to understand Wonderland as I do!”

 

Bruce jerked his head to the hostages. “Let them go.”

“Don’t be clever,” Tetch said. “You sit down, right there, and get this on. I’ll do it, you pest, you can watch them leave. But I’m not letting you go. Not someone who wants a better world. Not my Alice.”

 

Tetch pulled around a chair and patted the seat, and Bruce slid himself into it tensely. No choice. No choice. Tetch dropped the helmet over his cowl, and then pressed the button. Across the room, purple and teal lights flickered and died out, and civilians roused from their sleep.

 

“They’re free, pest, you see?” Tetch said. “You’re all free to go! Run, before the Batman eats you!” He flicked several switches on, and Bruce felt the headset begin to vibrate. _“And as in uffish thought he stood—the Jabberwock, with eyes of flame—came whiffling through the tulgey wood—and burbled as it came!”_  
  
The world began to turn and fold into the black. _“One, two! One, two! And through and through—the vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head—he went galumphing back!”_

 

-

 

“Mr. Grayson? Mr. Grayson!”

 

Dick jolted awake, a few sheets of notebook paper fluttering from his desk like bird’s feathers. After a few moments of blinking stupidly at Mrs. Carson, he broke into a grin, and said, “I said you could call me _Dick.”_

 

The class chortled. Mrs. Carson’s chubby face went white like milk, and her lips and chin curdled. “To the office, young man.”

 

Dick winced. Bruce wouldn’t be happy; he’d grunt in an extra dour way, and then Dick would spend the rest of the night trying to be extra nice to make it up to him. It wasn’t his fault that Mrs. Carson wanted his life to be miserable.

 

Dick snapped his binder closed, and pushed himself out of his chair to slink like a kicked dog to the principal’s office.

 

“Your _things,”_ Mrs. Carson said, snippily. “You’re _leaving.”_

 

“What?” Dick said. His smile stretched wide. “Oh, sweet!”

 

Mrs. Carson glared; the class chortled again; Dick awkwardly glanced away. He scrambled his things together and stuffed them into his bag, throwing it over his shoulder. A few crumpled pieces of paper stuck out of the zipper.

 

His friend, Dominique, mouthed, _“Take me with you.”_

 

Dick tossed him a wink, and then darted through the door. The more distance he could put between himself and Mrs. Carson’s beady eyes, the better. He ran down the halls, which earned him a glare from a janitor, and skidded to a stop just before the office. Behind the glass wall, there was Alfred, sitting primly with his hands in his lap, looking as if he’d swallowed a big gulp of lemon juice. He always thought that stuffy look was funny.

 

Dick threw open the door. “Al!” Dick shrieked, throwing himself at Alfred. “You should’ve told me I had an early day today!”

 

Alfred chuckled warmly, patting him stiffly on the back. “It was a new development, sir.”

 

“I would give anything to miss Earth Science,” Dick said, and then snapped his mouth shut when the clerk behind the desk gave him a sharp look.

 

Alfred signed him out, sharing a terse word with the irritable clerk, and then Dick jogged backwards in front of him while they pushed through the doors and out to the parking lot.

 

“What is it? What are we doing?” Dick asked. “Is it you-know-what? Is it a good thing, or a bad thing? Do we need the you-know-who? Please tell me we need the you-know-who.”

 

“None of the above, Master Dick,” Alfred said, opening Dick’s door for him. Dick thanked him, and hopped in, still chattering away.  
  
“It’s not Bat-stuff?” Dick asked. “I mean, you’ve got that look on your face, like Bruce has done something real stupid again. I figured you were callin’ in the cavalry.”

 

Alfred stilled, hands wrapped around the wheel. “I have,” he said, “a… look, sir?”

 

“Oh, yeah,” Dick said. “S’real funny. What’s Batman need me for? I’m ready, I’m ready to go. I feel like I could kick Godzilla’s hind-end.”

 

“No lizards today, I’m afraid, sir,” Alfred said. “As it were… I haven’t heard from Master Bruce in hours.”

 

Dick stopped. He felt cold. “Because he’s undercover?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“Meeting? On another planet?”

“There was a hostage situation at Wayne Enterprises this morning,” Alfred said, turning the wheel. “He hasn’t returned.”

 

“Oh,” Dick said, quietly. He kicked his legs up on the seat, wrapping his arms around his knees. He rooted around in his bag for the Rubik’s cube, and twisted it absently. “Superman? Have… did you call Clark?”

 

“There is a policy, Master Dick.”

 

“Screw the policy!” Dick snarled. “I don’t _care_ about the policy!”

 

“Sir,” Alfred snapped. “I would advise you do not speak to me in such a manner.”

 

Dick deflated, and slouched in his chair. “Sorry, Alfred. That was rude of me. I got carried away.”

 

“You are forgiven.”

“It’s a day, right? We have to give him a day?” Dick asked, pressing his cheek against his knee.

 

Alfred sighed. “Yes. We do.”

 

 _Batman doesn’t need a day,_ Dick thought. _You could strand him in the desert with a plastic spoon and he’d be back in Gotham in just an hour. He’d probably think an hour was too long. He’d do it again just to make sure he could do it in half._

 

His thoughts did not comfort him.

 

The rest of the ride through Gotham’s spiralling streets was somber; Dick looked out of the window at the overcast sky, wishing he’d see the familiar slip of black wing against the gray, and maybe the antsy thing in his heart would finally settle.

 

The drive back to the Manor and the trudge inside were bleary and forgettable, and even Alfred’s cookies, which Dick came home to about once a week, tasted like ash. He wrote the same sentence twice on his spelling homework before he chucked his binder across the room, and marched into the Cave. He curled in Bruce’s chair, one of the spare capes wrapped around him, twisting his Rubik’s cube with stiff and shaking fingers.

 

Bruce, he knew, was capable, maybe capable to an insane degree; when the Penguin had locked him in a coffin bound in chains and dumped it in the harbor, Bruce had broken the surface in just four minutes, and swam a mile to shore only to grumble, “The water stinks,” and flick a caught piece of flotsam off his shoulder. Bruce defied logic; so it was only logical that Bruce would come back. But that didn’t stop the ants in his chest.

 

When Dick put down the Rubik’s cube, his hands were steady, and Robin’s mask winked at him from its glass case.

 

-

 

The first few people he’d tried to ask for help had stared at him and slowly backed away, so he’d decided that he must be very ugly.

 

After the first few attempts, he’d figured he’d ought to travel by rooftop, so he found himself sliding down a few fire escapes to splash on the wet concrete below in a nice abandoned alley. Something told him the streets were usually clogged arteries of people, so he guessed the rain must have driven them away. Or maybe it had been the ominous blood stain that shone beneath the water. It looked fresh and felt old.

 

He pushed one of the dumpsters away from the adjoining wall, flipping over the lid and leaning it against the brick. It was a nice little house, here on—Park Row, was that what the sign said? He crouched beneath it, grateful that the cold and the rain kept the smell mostly at bay.

 

The construction of his hopeful little house had roused an alley cat that had slid into the dumpster for shelter, and she crawled now into his lap, mewling. She was fat and smelled like she was rotting already, but that was fine. He probably didn’t smell very nice, either.

 

He rubbed her ears absently. “That’s a sweet girl.”

 

She made an angry little noise, stretching a paw and planting it on the yellow oval on his chest.

 

He looked down. “Oh, I know. I don’t know why I have a bat on me, either.”

 

She hissed.

 

“That’s not what you meant,” he said, frowning. “Is Bat your… name?”

 

She offered a soft huff, and licked a stripe over her gray-furred shoulder.

 

“So you’re Bat the Cat, then?”

 

Bat the Cat settled against him, purring. For a reason he couldn’t define, he was glad he wasn’t in his little house on Park Row all alone.

 

Above him, another bat cut through sheets of black ice rain and midnight clouds, and went unanswered.


	2. YZXPDZIWH I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's back!

Gotham’s cut-glass corners were never welcoming, but even less so at night, when the darkness moved through the city like a great beast between the towering skyscrapers. The darkness lived in every layer of Gotham’s forest and had an adaptation for each: in Gotham’s emergent layer, the darkness breathed in the form of corporate fat cats thumbing through crisp bills; in Gotham’s canopy, the darkness stole the conscious body that feared the unknown and lived in every man; in Gotham’s understory, the darkness cut its teeth on poker, heroin, the jugulars sacrificed in the name of black money; and on Gotham’s rotting floor, where the soil was depleted of nutrients from the constant bloody rain, the darkness took form and walked the Earth in human viciousness. No layer of the city was left untainted; Gotham’s spectacle always created violent competition. So the Batman’s signal was carved into the sky above. 

 

“Hiya, Commish,” Robin said. 

 

Commissioner Gordon startled, coughed, swallowed, and coughed again. He thumped a fist against his chest a few times, as if to pummel his heart into beating properly. “Don’t surprise me like that. Where’s Batman?”

 

“Uh, golfing,” Dick said, hopping off the rain-slick parapet. His boots tossed up water and grit that splattered uncomfortably on his ankles, his water-resistant cape flicked him on his calves.

 

Gordon’s mustache twitched. “Can you tell him to pick up the pace?”

 

“He’s a real bad golfer.”

 

Untrue. Bruce was as good at golf as he was everything he chose to apply his mind to, which was the height of technical perfection. 

 

“Is he alright?” Gordon asked.

 

Robin shrugged. “Uh, that’s sort of the problem. He’s gone missing.”

 

Gordon stilled. One fluffy orange brow raised above the black rim of his glasses. “What?”   
  


“He’s gone missing! Think if I pass out some flyers we’ll find him? Lost bat, please call the number attached to the ear?”

 

“Alright, alright, I get it, pipsqueak,” Gordon grunted. He fell silent, and there was only the rain before he spoke again: “He never would’ve let you out during a storm.”

 

Dick crossed his arms, scowling.  _ Let you out.  _ Like he was some snot-nosed kid. “He’s so unfair. He thinks I’ll catch a cold, the geek.”

 

Gordon chuckled, but the weight of the roiling clouds above pressed against him, and he slid into stillness. “Maybe you ought to go home. Wherever on God’s green earth it is you call home.”

 

“It’s a cave,” Dick said. “We sleep on the floor and hunt rats for food. The first time I saw McDonald’s, I cried.”

 

“Oh, sure.”

 

“Real tears, Mr. Gordon!”

 

“My heart’s bleedin’, kid.”

 

Dick sniffed. “As it should.” Dick strolled forward, thumbs tucked into his belt. “I guess I’m your Batman for the night.”   
  


Gordon’s mouth twisted, and he shook his head. “Oh, no you’re not. I can handle it for the night. You need to be there when Batman finds you.”   
  


“That’s not how it works.” 

 

Untrue. Robin’s cape was the color of Batman’s signal because it lit Batman’s way home; Batman always, always found him, no matter when, no matter where, no matter how dark. He remembered Bruce crouching beside the dumpster Dick had hidden behind in Park Row, because somehow Bruce had known exactly where Dick would run—

 

“Jeepers, Commish, I’ve got it!”

 

Half an hour of persistent pleading and gruff reluctance later, Dick was on his knees in Gordon’s passenger seat, one gloved hand cupped over his eyes to block the neon street signs. He swept the landscape of East End with a curled lip; here, it didn’t matter if passerby saw him in costume in the police commissioner’s front seat. A costume, here, was not out of the ordinary, and no one in East End could recognize Robin when they saw him.

 

“Nothing so far, Cap’n,” Dick said. 

 

Gordon took a drag of his cigarette. “We’re not even there yet. Legs out of the seat, pipsqueak.” 

 

“With all due respect, sir, I refuse.” 

 

Gordon muttered to himself, and turned the wheel over. “Listen, kid—”

 

_ “Robin.  _ I’m  _ Robin.” _

 

“You… you don’t actually live… there, do you? I know what the rumors say, but I always figured, hel _ —heck, _ they were just rumors. You don’t  _ really _ live in Crime Alley—”

 

“It’s Park Row,” Dick insisted. 

 

Gordon raised an eyebrow, which seemed to be a skill he had perfected. “Crime Alley’s what everyone calls it.” 

 

Dick flopped back in the seat with his arms crossed, finally relenting to the fact that he wasn’t going to find any sign of Batman yet. “Well, I call it by its name. It’s Park Row.” 

 

Gordon huffed, and the drive continued in silence for another handful of minutes. 

 

“Want some music? I can—”

 

“We’re searching,” Dick said, seriously. “No distractions.”

 

Gordon muttered something to himself, but he didn’t speak again until the headlights illuminated the dirty sign that read  _ Park Row.  _ Dick hopped out of the car before it even stopped moving. 

 

“Wait here!” he called into the rain, boots slapping against the wet pavement. “Batman?” he called, quietly. “Batman? It’s me! I’m here! We’ve gotta wrap this up quick, or Penny-one’s gonna kill me. I’m not supposed to be out!”

 

Towards the corner, the lid of a dumpster had been propped against a wall, like a makeshift house. Dick remembered hiding here in the snow years ago. He remembered the cold, he remembered the stinging fury, he remembered the shame. He remembered thinking he could see, in that bit of naked concrete where the snow had been scraped away, the spiral pattern of blood that he could see now, just beneath the water. Their bodies laid in the street of the great city forever. 

 

Bruce came here a lot. He came here at least once a week, always in some disguise; as Batman, as Matches Malone, as Paul Allingham, as Robert Goodwin, as Harry Carter, as Clem Sohn, as August Vane, as Frank Bell, but never as Bruce Wayne.

 

Dick dug a flashlight out of his belt and flashed it into the dark expanse protected from the rain, and a dozen pairs of eyes winked back at him. One set was large and carved into forceful slits and blank, unfeeling, where the others were round and cat-like. 

 

“Batman!” Dick said. “Man, I  _ knew _ I was right. It was a super mega long-shot, too. What are you waiting for? We need to go!”

 

The silvery-blue, reflective eyes darted from one side to the other.

 

Dick pinched the bridge of his nose.  _ “Yes, _ you, you dingo. No, I’m talking to the… how many cats is that?”

 

“Seven,” Batman answered, but his voice was thready and thin. He coughed, once, and replied in a stronger voice, “Seven.”

 

“Seven? How’d you—nevermind. Can we keep them?” Dick asked. “I’m sure Penny-one won’t mind. Maybe.”

 

“Who is that,” Batman said, flatly. He was still pressed into the dark, like how caged animals hid as far from their human onlookers as possible. 

 

“Who is… Penny-one? Uh, Batman? You alright?” Dick asked, a note of fear in his voice.

 

“Why are you calling me that,” Batman said, in the same flat, cold voice.

 

“Because I call you by your name.”

 

Batman stared at him for a moment longer, but the explanation seemed enough for him, because he hefted the kittens and their mother into his arms and straightened, pushing the dumpster lid closed with his shoulder. “I didn’t think that was my name,” he said, almost to himself.

 

Dick ignored him in favor of cooing at one of the kittens. “Oh, you look like a Bill, yes you do. B, look at his nose! Jeez Louise, these are some small kittens.”

 

“They were just born,” Batman said. He nodded to the car. “Is… that where we’re going?”   
  
“Yeah, don’t worry. Just follow my lead, buster, let me do the chatting. We’ll figure out what’s going on with you in a jiff. Just don’t say anything,” Dick said, glaring up at Batman. “Not a word! You’re pretty good at that,  _ usually, _ I think I can trust you with this.”

 

_ Even if I wouldn’t trust you with so much as a batarang right now,  _ Dick thought. 

 

“Am I?” Batman asked. 

 

“Sure, sure, big man. Jim! Jimmy! Jimster! We’ve got him!” Dick called, waving his arms.

 

Gordon stepped out of the car, one hand laid protectively on the door. “He went kitten-collecting?”

 

“Ah… I guess so,” Dick said, arms akimbo. “We’ve got, ah, um, bit of a problem. We need to go… solve it. You’re fresh out of Batmen tonight.”

 

“Unfortunate,” Gordon said, dryly. “It’s good to see you back, Batman.”

 

“Actually,” Batman rumbled, “I think my name is Br—”

 

Dick stomped his foot on empty beer can. “Bright! He thinks his name is Bright, y’know, because he’s so,” Dick tapped his head, “y’know, so  _ bright.” _ He patted Batman’s arm. “A bright little light bulb, our Batman! Hah, hah. We’ll be, uh, going now. Thanks for the… drive.”

 

Gordon raised one keen eyebrow.

 

“Would you like a kitten?” Batman asked. 

 

_ Oh boy,  _ he thought. 

 

-

 

“It’s just through here,” Dick promised.

 

“Are you sure? They’re getting antsy.”

 

Bruce had tied his cape into a makeshift cat cradle, which he now looked into with a worried angle to his mouth. “We should’ve taken them to the shelter first.”

 

“I told you, it’s dangerous to have you out in public right now! You’re trying to reveal your secret identity all over the place, and if you do that, it’s game over! No more Batman!”   
  


Bruce huffed. “And what’s the problem with that?”

 

Dick stopped. “What’s the problem with that?” He wheeled around on his toes, one finger jabbing at the oval on Bruce’s chest. “What’s the problem with  _ that? _ Gotham  _ needs _ Batman!  _ We _ need  _ you! _ Every time Gotham sees your symbol in the sky, they feel hope. Every time that symbol lights up, someone is saved. You tell me what’s the  _ problem _ with  _ that, _ Bruce.”   
  


Bruce frowned. “I don’t remember this. I told you.”   
  


Dick turned around, picking his way through the rocky tunnel. Bruce had been considering building a direct tunnel to the Cave, lately, large enough to drive the Batmobile through, so they didn’t have to keep crawling up this dark pathway like rats and hiding the Batmobile in the shrubbery outside; now, after sneaking through the sewers and the bowels of the city for hours, Dick wished he already had.

 

“Oh, sweet Superman,” Dick sighed, sagging a little on his aching legs. “The entrance is just up there.”

 

Dick trotted forward, toward the padlock. “Two, seven, space, one, nine, three, nine. What? That’s the right—you changed it, you punk!”

 

“I don’t remember doing it!” Bruce said, defensively. Without looking, he scooped up a kitten dangerously close to the edge of the pouch and placed it in the center of the fluffy, squalling group. 

 

“Oh my gosh,” Dick said, dragging his hands over his face. “That’s it. We’re going to die here. We’ll starve! You know what Alfred’s making tonight?”   
  


Bruce shrugged.

 

Dick groaned.  _ “Food! _ He’s making food! Aw, don’t look all guilty like that. I’m sorry, Boss-man. It’s not your fault you got your memory nabbed. We’ll crack this caper, don’t you worry. How’s your melon?”   
  


“My… melon?” Bruce asked, frowning. “Oh. My head, you mean?”

 

“Yeesh, you’re a little loopier than I thought,” Dick said, flopping on the ground. “Oh, it’s cold! Cold! Rock is cold! Gosh, when Alfred checks the cameras an’ sees we’re here, I’m booking it for a warm shower.”

 

Bruce settled across from him. His pinky was being chewed on through the glove by a gummy little brindle kitten. Dick thought they should name that one Neil. Or was it Neal? “Alfred,” he said. “I… know an Alfred.”

 

Dick laid his forehead against his knees, fingers clasped over his neck. “Ah, geez, Bruce, you’re totally bungled up there. What do you remember?”   
  


“My name is Bruce,” Bruce said confidently. “I… know someone named Alfred. And I trust you.”

 

“Aw, big guy,” Dick whined. “Of course you do. I’m  _ Robin. _ Anything else? At all?”

 

“Vague things. Something about bats.”   
  


Dick perked up. “Really?”

 

“No. I just figured that since I had a bat on this costume and we were in a cave, I had some sort of bat obsession.”

 

Dick winced. “Okay, so you’ve got a little bit of remembering to do. We’ll jog your memory somehow. It looks like it’s recovering a bit on its own, anyway.”

 

Bruce absently stroked a kitten. “Do you have any cats?” 

 

“Uh, no,” Dick said. “And, uh, we live in the same place. Wayne Manor. With Alfred.”

 

“Wayne Manor,” Bruce murmured. “I think… I think I remember.”

 

“Let’s hope you do, Bruce-ster.”

 

The bolted steel door creaked and turned, and Alfred appeared behind it, wrenching it open with both hands. “Good Lord, sirs. Have you honestly _ —hh— _ forgotten the passcode?”   
  


Dick flicked a gloved hand to Bruce. “Steve Irwin here changed the passcode without telling me, and then got his memory bamboozled.”   
  


Alfred’s brows drew together. He straightened his suit jacket primly. “Bamboozled, you say?”

 

Dick trotted through the doorway, over to the cot and the jumble of clunky, stale-colored boxes and wires that made up the medbay. “Ultra-boozled, Al. I don’t think he remembers his last name.”

 

Alfred gave him a startled look, and opened his mouth to say something undoubtedly sharp, but was interrupted by Bruce making a noise like a squeaky toy that’s been stepped on. 

 

“I thought you said I had a thing for bats,” Bruce said, panicked, staring at Dick with wide eyes. He jerked his head to the scattering of bats incoming from the morning, the ones separated from the flock, from just beyond the nets that had been set up for as long as Dick had been Robin. “I think they’re terrifying.”

 

Dick’s mouth fell open. “No  _ way. _ They’re so cuddly and fluffy! We get a couple that hang around the Batcomputer.” 

 

“I think they’re gross-looking,” Bruce said, tearing himself away. 

 

Alfred flicked open a drawer and drew his penlight, beckoning Bruce to sit on the examination table. Bruce passed the bundle of kittens to Dick, who was immediately given a wary look by the mother.

 

“You’ll have to earn her trust, first,” Bruce said, with a wry twist of the mouth. 

 

Alfred tilted his head away. “Stop looking at those blasted kittens, Master Bruce. I need your eyes.”   
  


“Al,” Bruce whined, unthinkingly, and then his face went slack with shock. “Al! I  _ do _ know you!”

 

“Yes, quite,” Alfred said, dryly. “Your eyes, sir.”

 

Bruce laughed, and sat on his hands. “Fine.”

 

After a moment of careful squinting, Alfred declared Bruce’s eyes normal, and then asked a few probing questions about the state of Bruce’s skull, all of which Bruce answered in the negative. Then Alfred looked over Bruce’s head himself, searching for any sensitive places where trauma might have occurred. Dick wasn’t paying attention to any of it. He was looking at the bats.

 

“Are you really scared of them?” Dick asked, words muffled by the way his palm was holding up his cheek. A kitten  _ mrrowed _ curiously.

 

Bruce peered at the bats. “I think so. I don’t know why. They didn’t do anything to deserve it.”

 

“I never figured you’d be scared of  _ bats,”  _ Dick said. “But why else would you dress up as a bat, I guess?” 

 

“Dress up as a bat?” Bruce said, startled. “Is that what this is? A bat costume?”   
  


Dick moaned. “Boy, do we have a lot of work to do.”   
  


“There will be no labor of the sort,” Alfred said, suddenly. For most of the session he’d had a faraway look on his face, as if waking up to a dream. “Master Bruce’s memories are not to be tampered with.”

 

“I think they’re coming back,” Bruce said, in a soft, gentle tone. Always trying to placate Alfred, even without memory of how or even why he should. “They’re just slow. I didn’t remember my name at first.”

 

“Then we will let them return at their own pace,” Alfred said, staring at Dick while he said it. Dick flushed red to the tips of his ears and looked away. “I suggest rest for us all. And get those bloody kittens somewhere I won’t know they exist, Master Dick.”

 

“Right away, sarge,” Dick said, hopping up with the squealing kittens and trotting up the stairs. He put the kittens in Bruce’s room, where Alfred would immediately know they existed, and gave the mother a bowl of water, and ran back down to dig through the fridge and dump some leftover chicken on a plate. When he returned, Bruce was staring at himself in a long mirror propped against a wall, trying out various types of snarls. Dick smothered a giggle. 

 

“I guess this is why no one would help me,” Bruce said. “I just thought I must’ve been ugly.”

 

Dick giggled. “And what says you’re not, you old goat?”   
  


Bruce threw him a flat look. “Harsh, kid. Real harsh.”

 

Dick’s laughter worked out of him, and for a moment he sat there, silently watching Bruce fiddle with the cape, trying to pose it like a bat’s wing. “The suit’s not the reason no one would help you, Bruce.”

 

Bruce turned to him, one eyebrow raised. In a sea of things he had never seen Bruce do, it was comforting to see at least one gesture remain the same: that stupid  _ eyebrow. _

 

“Batman doesn’t scare the innocent,” Dick said. “And no one’s innocent in East End.”

 

Dick stayed in the Cave long after Alfred had taken Bruce upstairs. He flicked on the police radio, wondering if it would tell him why Gordon had chosen to shine the signal, and it flickered to life with a burst of static.

 

_ “—Fox could be anywhere. Not a clue was left at the scene, Lieutenant.”  _

 

_ “Anything in Tetch’s history? Anything at all?”  _

 

_ “He’s not even from here. He’s from _ —kzzch— _ something about a school bombing, nothing conclusive.” _

 

_ “Dammit. What would Tetch have against Fox? The man gave him his job, free reign over the entire project—”  _

 

He stayed, and he sat in Batman’s chair, and he folded Batman’s cape over his shoulders, and he thought about Batman’s light that shone in the sky that night and went unanswered, and he twisted his Rubik’s cube.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We return with a trope I love: baby Robin wearing the bat-cape.


	3. IVEVOZGRLMH

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Penultimate chapter!

That night, Bruce had a nightmare. He dreamt of a great snake that lived beneath Gotham City and slithered out through the streets at night, green scales wrinkled over pumping muscle as it bunched and curled through the streets, illuminated by East End’s casinos. The snake had seven heads and went on without end, and when one head would be chopped off it would lie in the street of the dark city forever, another of mercy’s miscarried babies. It spat venom into Gotham’s emergent layer, which poured into champagne glasses and swirled over deals that would suck the soul out of the city; and in Gotham’s canopy its purple eyes saw evil in every unknowable thing; and in Gotham’s understory it flashed scales as precious as any metal men spilt blood over; and on Gotham’s floor its massive body crushed everything beneath its terrible weight. No layer of the city was safe; each mouth was given its slice of the city, and Gotham was devoured, inch by inch, to rot evermore in the beast’s stomach. Batman sat beneath the willow tree and saw all, and was powerless. 

 

“Good morning!” Robin—Dick, his adopted son, as Alfred had explained—announced, standing on the edge of the bed with his fists wrapped in Bruce’s comforter. Bruce figured he must’ve taken the edge and pulled it, rolling Bruce out of the bed. The squirt was stronger than he looked. “I drank all your coffee, sorry ‘bout that. Al wasn’t looking.”

 

Bruce groaned against the offending light, and flopped an arm over his face.

 

Dick hurled a pillow at him. Bruce took the hit with a grunt. “We don’t have time for hibernation! We have work to do, Bruce-ster Roo-ster. I’ve gotta take you to  _ Batman _ school.”

 

“Batman school,” Bruce mumbled, reaching up and squishing the pillow to his face.

 

“Yessiree, Big Bird. Batman school. I’ve gotta teach ya how to be the Batman, pronto-ronto.”

 

“How to… be the Batman?” Bruce said. He let his arm fall to his side with a thunk, taking the pillow with it, and squinted up at Dick. The kid’s hair was a curly, rolling mess, and his pajamas—a noble shade of blue with yellow ‘w’s’ on them—were rumpled and rucked up about his ankles where he was outgrowing them. The morning light cast his brown skin in a soft golden color. Bruce absently wondered where he was from. 

 

Dick nodded, his face cracking with a grin, blue eyes sparkling. “That’s right. If there’s anybody who knows how to be Batman better than you do, it’s me.” Dick jabbed a thumb at himself. “This guy can teach you everything you know.”

 

“Why?”

 

The corners of Dick’s mouth turned down so fast it was almost comical. “Why? Because there has to be a Batman!”

 

Bruce pushed himself off the floor with a  _ hnh. _ “But  _ why _ does there need to be one?”

 

Dick clapped his hands over his ears, screwing his eyes shut. His cheeks were chubby with baby fat, and he looked rather like one of the kittens. “What am I even hearing right now? Nonsense! I’m hearing total nonsense! Listen, let’s just—let’s just cover the basics. Meet me downstairs in five minutes, and don’t let Alfred see you. Got it?”

 

“Downstairs? Isn’t that where Alfred—oh,” Bruce said. “You mean  _ downstairs  _ downstairs.”

 

Dick pinched his nose. “Jiminy Cricket, this is gonna be rough. Okay, five minutes. Don’t be late!”

 

Bruce scrambled up. “Wait, I don’t—”

 

The door clicked shut.

 

“... know how to get there.”

 

Bruce rubbed his face.  _ Oh boy,  _ he thought. 

 

-

 

Instead of going down to the black-and-blue cave where the bats and their snarling, twitchy faces lived, Bruce inspected the room that was meant to be his. It was clean, tidy, the sort of room where the bed had strong hospital corners, and the dressers were filled with sharply folded clothes and the closet was filled with pressed suits. The surfaces sparkled, the bathroom glittered. In the cabinets hid a small army of bandages, all tightly tucked in their packages and sorted by size, and well-loved braces. Bruce wondered if the scars he'd seen on his chest in the shower last night were from a life he used to live, or if they were from the life he lived now. Bruce settled himself down to sit near the kittens, checking their eyes, noses, ears and mouths for any sort of drainage—he hoped the cold and wet of the night before hadn't made them sick. He waited until Dick got tired of waiting.

 

Dick flung himself into the room with a frustrated growl. He still reminded Bruce of one of the kittens. “Where have you  _ even _ been?”

 

“I don’t know how to get to the… cave,” Bruce said, awkwardly.

 

Dick blinked at him, and understanding dawned slowly on his face as his thin, dark eyebrows crawled upwards. “Jinkies, B, I’m never gonna get used to this.” He reached forward and grabbed Bruce by the hand, and pulled him into the hallway. They made it to the cave—the Batcave, as Bruce was told—after dodging Alfred by the kitchen, which Bruce thought was a rather miraculous achievement, considering Dick wouldn’t stop humming an ominous song under his breath:  _ badum-badum, bum, bum, badum-badum, bum, bum... _

 

"Suit up," Dick said, tossing Bruce the yellow belt he'd been wearing last night. "We've got work to do. We've gotta whip you into shape!"

 

Bruce caught the belt and said, "I'm not even sure how to put this on."

 

After he was dressed, Dick pulled him again by the hand through the tunnel they'd been in last night, and into the vast forest that surrounded Wayne Manor. The trees around Wayne Manor crowded close to it, as if to protect it; the trees were young and thin and the forest floor was populated only by leaf litter, but the oaks with their broadening boughs showed the promise of turning into ancient vessels of life someday. The rain from the night before had made the trees dark and the leaves droop, and the air smelled sweet and musty, and the warmth clung to them as the rainwater began to evaporate. 

 

Dick strode into a sunlit clearing, and turned to stand proudly in the center, hands propped on his hips. "Welcome to Batman school.”

 

"Okay," Bruce said. He squinted around the woods, watching the looming shadows. As with any forest the night was visible even during the day. "Any reason we're out here instead of the… Batcave?” 

 

"It's so Alfred doesn't find us," Dick said. "He doesn't want me doing this, and don’t even get me started on how  _ weird _ he’s being, but I think Gotham City needs you."

 

"Do they need me that bad?" Bruce asked.

 

"Remember the signal you saw last night?" Dick asked.

 

Bruce shook his head, and Dick threw his hands up. "I’m sorry! I keep forgetting you don’t know anything! The signal is a light that sits on the roof of the police department building, and when it's turned on it shines a bat _ —your _ bat—into the sky. That symbol is the Commish's way of contactin' us, so we can save the day n’all."

 

"That seems like a waste of energy."

 

"You're not thinking about it right," Dick said, pulling over a log and sitting on top of it, legs crossed like a sage dispensary of wisdom. "You need to think a little differently. It’s like… the North Star. You always know how to find North if you can find that star. So what happens when you look up?”

 

"You realize that finding North is useless because there’s no guarantee there’s anything North of you," Bruce said.

 

"Ease off that pessimism, Big B. When you look up, you see the  _ light.  _ You know you can find your way home. This—" Dick jumped forward, and tapped the symbol on Bruce's chest, "—means something. It means a lot of somethings."

 

"And you're going to tell me what it means?”

 

"Uh, no. I'm actually going to teach you how to fling yourself off of something really tall," Dick said. He grinned. “If I push you out of a tree, I figure  _ you’ll _ figure out what it all means on the way down.”

 

“I hope you don’t mean that literally.”

 

Dick’s grin turned sharp. Bruce shifted nervously.  “Now, before we start, I’ve got bat-rules, right from the bat-rule book. You’ll figure out what these mean on the way down, too. That’s how I did it. One: Batman doesn’t kill. Not ever, not never, not once in a blue moon, not once in a lifetime, not ever  _ ever. _ Two: Batman doesn’t use guns. When you get your head screwed on straight, you’ll thank me. Three: Batman and Robin will never die. Self-explanatory, I think you get that one. Four: Batman thinks of everything. Explains itself. Last but not least: Batman is a protector. Also self-explanatory, you’ll get it.”

 

Dick winked. “Don’t look so nervous. You’ll figure it out!”

 

That was how Bruce found himself perching on the high bough of a tree, one hand wrapped around a grappling gun. 

 

Dick was in a tree on the other side, calling advice through cupped hands. “You hold the bar in your hand, and that—yes, that—it goes between your fingers! And then you press the trigger on the end to shoot, and then you press it again to retract—no, no, you have to press it hard! You said you designed it to be hard to push, so it wouldn’t randomly go off—not over  _ there!” _

 

Bruce watched the pronged head disappear over the trees to his left. “Wow. That’s a long reach.” He tilted the gun in his hand, inspecting it curiously.

 

“We don’t have time for you to be  _ weird! _ Just  _ retract _ it!” Dick called. He was loud enough that a few scattered birds separated from the flock when wheeling off into the morning.

 

Bruce huffed, but he jammed the button again, and the end came whizzing back. Bruce plucked a pierced leaf off of one prong. “And you want me to fire at  _ that _ tree?”   
  


“Dead center! Trust me, it’ll hook into the wood! Just let it carry you! Act natural!”

 

The grappling gun fired with a pop, and the prong landed in the trunk of the tree with a crack. Bruce pushed down the button, and the gun pulled him forward with a jerk—but his weight was too much. The prong was ripped from the tree, and Bruce crashed head-first into the ground.

 

He pushed himself up, rubbing at his stinging face. “What was that?” he snapped. 

 

“I’m sorry!” Dick squealed, scrambling down the tree.“I really didn’t think you were that heavy!”

 

"You've got a little, uh, blood, on your lip," Dick said, landing in the clearing. “And some more blood, right there, under your nose, and… a lot of dirt, really.” Bruce wiped it off with his cape, and Dick made a little gesture that meant  _ wipe further to the side.  _ Bruce stared flatly at him instead. Dick smothered a grin and said, “Uh, round two?”

 

-

 

Bruce hit the ground with an  _ oof.  _ He tumbled in a bed of pine needles until he rolled to a stop, and then he laid against the ground and willed everything to stop aching. 

 

“I hate trail mix,” Dick said, plopping an M&M into his mouth. He’d stretched out on his log, ankles crossed and hooked over a woody knob. “I always end up eating the good parts first.”

 

“Aren’t,” Bruce panted. “Aren’t you supposed… to be helping… ?”

 

“I am! That was a really bad glide,” Dick said, unhelpfully.

 

Bruce flopped back on the ground. “What genius thought gliding with a cape was a smart idea,” he hissed.

 

“Uh, that’d be you, genius,” Dick said, tossing another bit of candy into his mouth.

 

-

 

Dick shrieked, and ducked behind his log. “Watch where you’re throwing those!”

 

“I don’t know where I’m throwing them!” Bruce shouted. “They’re just going wherever they want to!”

 

“Aw, screw you,” Dick whined, picking a sad pile of cashews that had been spilled on the ground. “You made me drop my nuts! Oh. Heh.  _ Nuts.  _ Oh, and you’re bleeding, by the way.”

 

“What?” Bruce said.

 

Dick nodded. “I can’t tell if the cut on your chin is from the batarang or one the eight hundred and thirty-two times you’ve fallen today.”

 

-

 

“You ever think that raisins just look like little rotten lizard brains?” Dick asked, studying a raisin.

 

Bruce crawled to the log and flopped against it, gasping for breath. 

 

“You’ve got a leaf stuck to your shoe,” Dick said. “Maybe it’s a really unlucky leaf, and that’s why you suck donkey butt?”

 

Bruce heaved a sigh, and curled his leg, plucking the offending leaf off of the sole of his boot. He noticed a curious latch on the heel of his shoe, and pulled it.

 

“Ooh, you think raisins could be pickled fingers?” Dick asked. “Because that’s what happens when you’re in the shower for long enough.”

 

The bottom of the boot’s heel gave way, and beneath there was a black device taped to the top of the boot. 

 

“Like imagine witches having pickled—what are you— _ don’t press that!” _

 

-

 

After the last of the bats finally disappeared and wheeled, shrieking, into the broken stillness of the freshly-fallen night, Bruce and Dick crawled out of the tree hollow they’d hidden from the swarm in. 

 

_ “Why _ do I need a  _ bat-call!”  _ Bruce shouted. “What’s even the point of it? A swarm of bats? Why would I  _ ever _ need that?”

 

“You’re  _ Bat _ man,” Dick said, settling back on his log. “Rule four, remember? Okay, now that you know that, let’s—”

 

“No,” Bruce said. “I’m done. Look, kid. I don’t remember any of this. I can’t do any of this. I’m sorry, but I am _ not _ Batman.”

 

“Don’t apologize,” Dick said, sourly. “The reason you can’t do it is because you don’t believe in it, I think, and that’s because I didn’t teach you that first.”

 

“What?” Bruce said.

 

“You still think we’re doing this for kicks,” Dick said, crossing his arms. “You think we do this to have fun. You think it’s just a swashbuckling adventure, just guys wastin’ their time. No. I mean, it is fun, and we’ve had adventures. But we  _ save _ people, Bruce.”

 

“If I really wanted to save people, why wouldn’t I just donate money instead of spending it all on _ —bat-calls!” _ Bruce shouted. “What’s the  _ use!” _   
  


“Because Gotham City is evil!” Dick yelled. “It is! The whole stinkin’ thing, top t’bottom, it’s  _ rotten! _ Any money you donate’s gonna go straight to the pockets of the people you want to fight! Any campaign you back is gonna twist right into the very thing you were tryin’ to crush! The system is  _ broke!” _

 

Dick fell silent, his little chest heaving, his face red with fury. When he spoke, it was carefully calm. "That’s why we’re not  _ in _ the system. We’re something new. Something no one’s ever seen before.”

 

“Something  _ crazy,” _ Bruce snarled mockingly.

 

Dick nodded, solemnly. “Yeah. We’re something crazy.”

 

It was the voice he said it with—one part awed, one part excited, one part honored—that forced Bruce to stop, and take in the young boy in front of him. He stood against the dark with a yellow cape lit like a beacon, and that wild hair that looked windblown, that expression that seemed to say,  _ I have never stopped flying and I won’t stop for you.  _ Brave and bold, and just that little bit cocky.

 

He’d become a great man someday.

 

“I think if I raised you,” Bruce said, quietly, “there’s one thing I did right.”

 

“What did you do last night?"

 

Bruce snorted. "Broke my brain, apparently.”

 

"No. What did you do?"

 

Bruce shrugged. "Got cold?"

 

Dick pressed his palms into his eyes, throwing  his head back to the sky. "You're unbelievable. The cats, Bruce, I meant about the cats! You protected them when they needed it. That’s what Batman does—he protects people. There’s a reason we have those rules. Just—”

 

They were interrupted by a brilliant, cutting yellow light shining above the winking gray leaves of the trees. A black bat danced over the clouds. A hush seemed to fall over the forest, if only for that moment. 

 

Dick turned his head to Bruce. “Please? Please? Just try it. You’ll figure out what it all means on the way down.”

 

Bruce closed his eyes. He made an aborted motion to rub his temples, but stopped when he realized he was wearing that awful cowl. “I’m pretty sure being Batman just means endless suffering, Dick.”

 

“Please?” Dick begged, clasping his hands together. “I’ll show you! You’ll see then!”   
  


“Fine,” Bruce sighed.

 

Dick whooped, dashing off through the forest. “Batman and Robin now and forever!” he shouted out behind him.

 

The forest erupted to life behind them. 

 

-

 

There were a couple of mishaps with the Batmobile. For a full five minutes, they had driven off-road, but accordingly the Batmobile could probably withstand running through a brick wall, galloping a gauntlet of volcanoes, and the crushing gravity of Jupiter, because it exploded back onto the street without so much as a stray jerk. A stop sign was also sacrificed to the cause, but Dick shrugged and said they could always drop off the money to pay for it later.

 

While Bruce scrambled over the car’s controls, begging Dick for help, Dick largely ignored him and listened in on the police radio, and directed Bruce to the Kirby Cola factory. Bruce’s memories were coming back in pieces, now, and he vaguely remembered holding a glass bottle of Kirby Cola with an orange-red wrapper in a much, much smaller hand.  _ A treat,  _ his mother—had she really been that beautiful?—had said.  _ For being such a patient young boy.  _ The fizz tickling his nose. The bubbling rolling down his throat, the quailing of pigeons somewhere above—

 

“This is a big break, boss,” Dick said. He ticked off reasons on his green-gloved fingers. “One, we can get Mr. Fox out of trouble. Mighty convenient of Tetch to stage a big fuss like this. Two, we  _ are _ going up against Tetch, and maybe if we retrace your steps we can figure out what bamblasted your noggin’, an’ fix it. And that means things can go back to normal.”

 

Bruce grunted, swerving to avoid a stray cat. Why were there so many cats in this city? “Define normal?”

 

“Well, you don’t hit that many stop signs,” Dick said. 

 

“It was only one! Why do I need a car that makes like a rocket?”

 

“Surprise: you really like rockets. So Tetch has apparently gotten a force of mooks, and taken the entire factory hostage. He’s trying to barter with Mr. Fox for his job back, I’ll bet you, but if he’s doing that, why would he make such a big deal out of it? Batman, do you remember anything that could help us? Anything at  _ all?” _

 

He thought, and remembered swirling the cola in the bottle to watch it slosh against the glass. Bruce shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

 

“By-the-by, when we’re in masks, it’s Robin only.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Dick looked at him curiously for a moment, and then said, “Fiddlesticks, Batman, I guess you’re not so good at strategy either right now, huh. Park a ways away from the building, we’ll creep up on it an’ get the layout.”

 

Some part of Bruce was starting to get disgruntled with Dick constantly ordering him around, but he followed anyway. Bruce figured stubbornness must be a trait of his, and felt, suddenly, as if he were viewing himself only through a yellowed pane of frosted glass. 

 

He wondered if the feeling would ever pass. 

 

They scaled the building by the alley and darted across the rooftops. Bruce tripped over the cape once, and was scared for a moment that he would fall, but something slyer and smarter than he was took over. When they were positioned on the roof adjacent from the Kirby Cola factory, Dick pulled out a pair of slim binoculars and studied the building.

 

It wasn’t much to look at. It was brick, stained black from rot, and a tangled mess of barbed wire and trash and collapsed fences nipped at its heels. The graffiti, bright colors including couple names, gang signs, and legitimate street art, was the most beautiful part of the building. 

 

"Tetch is probably on the top floor," Dick said, snapping them closed and sliding them back into his belt. Bruce idly wondered if they were night vision. He figured that if he could configure a way to summon an army of bats like Dracula himself, night vision binoculars had to be a breeze. “What he wants is to put distance between himself and the police stationed outside, so he's got the majority of the hostages between ‘em. We can agree that the hostages aren’t his main focus. Right, Batman?"

 

Dick turned to him, and emotions were difficult to decipher behind the lenses of his mask, but it  _ felt _ expectant. It felt like a student looking to a wiser teacher for advice, like a son looking to a father to show him the way. It made Bruce’s chest feel like the corona of a star.

 

Dick's head turned away. "Right. Uh. Brainless. Okay, we'll go with my plan."

 

"What's your plan."

 

Dick grinned. "Bombs away, Batman. Or, should I say...  _ bats  _ away."

 

Dick pulled his grappling hook out of his belt. "Trust me, Batman. You’ve been doing this longer than I have. Heck, you were  _ born _ for this. You'll know what to do. It's instinct."

 

With that, Dick fired away, his beacon of a cape flaring out behind him like a bright swath of sun, carved from the star itself.

 

Bruce closed his eyes.  _ Born for this.  _ He thought of that slippery thing inside of him that had kept him from falling, and wondered if it was true. 

 

He fired, and let the grappling line carry him to the other rooftop. The prongs found a better purchase in the concrete than they had in the wood, but his chest still slammed into the hard concrete edge. Robin chirped, "That's it, that's it, big guy," and hauled him over the lip of the building. The boy was whippet-thin, but stronger than he looked. Good kid. 

 

"Now, we go in through the windows," Dick said. He snuck low below the parapet, which was more difficult for Bruce considering his added bulk and height. Once or twice Dick leaned back and jerked him down.

 

"Hold my legs," Dick ordered. Bruce did so dutifully, with a bitter twist to his mouth, and Dick picked the lock on the window upside down. He slid through it like a cat; Bruce followed him, but had to wriggle to get his shoulders through. Robin hushed him furiously, but somehow almost silently. 

 

They hid together in the hollow of a desk, squished shoulder-to-shoulder and scarcely breathing.    
  
"He's  _ got _ to come, Fox!" a man, with a lilting and tilting and whirling voice, said. "He's simply got to! I made this especially for him. No one—and I mean not a single cat or rat or mouse or fox—has broken out of one of my dreams. All except this  _ bat.” _

 

Dick pulled a silver little rectangle from his belt, and hit the red button on top. A recorder. It was impossible to believe he'd trained a kid this clever.

 

"But,  _ oho,  _ was not to be! I tried to bring him to my rabbit hole, and he spooked! He tore off his dreamweaver and scrambled away like a wounded pest! Curious, curious, after all that about...  _ understanding... _ you don't understand, though, do you, Mr. Fox?" the man—presumably Tetch—asked. "That's why you're here. That's why I stole you away. To teach you a lesson."

 

Mumbling. Maybe Fox was gagged?   
  


Dick flicked him in the shoulder, and then flipped his hands and fingers—was it sign language? Was it something else?    
  


Bruce shrugged.

 

Dick pinched his nose. He dug a notepad out of his belt—which seemed to carry everything—and a pen, and scribbled out a note:  _ This is a trap. We need to get you out of here. _

 

It sounded reasonable enough. But Bruce stilled, and studied him.

 

He looked beyond the black hair and the brown skin, past the traffic light colors. He looked at a boy he knew only five things about: Robin was a light; Robin was his light; Robin had a heart of song; Robin was someone he trusted; and Robin, above and beyond all else, believed in him. For whatever impossible, incredible reason, Robin had done nothing but believe that Bruce—bereft of memory and skill and will—could be the Batman. Maybe he hadn't realized how much that belief had meant to him until now.

 

Bruce shook his head, ignored the outraged curl of Dick's mouth, moved out from under the table, and brought himself to his full height.

 

"Tetch," he rumbled. He hoped it sounded intimidating. 

 

Tetch whirled around. A white glove danced on the rim of his green top hat, white teeth grinned above a colorful bow.  _ "Oho! _ The Jabberwock it is! My pest it is! Curiouser and curiouser still, it took you so long!”

 

Bruce swallowed. "Give me Fox," he demanded, "and you'll get off easy."

 

Behind him, Dick made a choked noise. Wrong thing to say—he’d have to remember.

 

Tetch tittered. "Won't you come to tea, Jabberwock?"

 

A long table, decorated with white teapots with pink trim and lace table runners and small cakes and scones, stretched before him. On the opposite end, a man who was most probably Mr. Fox was bound up and gagged. On the end closest to Bruce, there was a helmet flashing purple and green, with, 'DRINK ME' scribbled on a piece of eggshell stationery tucked carefully beneath it.

 

What kind of useless trap was this?

 

"You want me," Bruce said. "You can take me. I'll put that thing on in exchange for Mr. Fox's immediate release."

 

The Mad Hatter squalled in outrage. "That  _ thing? _ You disrespect my Wonder—oh, alas. It's you, my Jabberwock. Sit. Have some tea. Drink  _ deeply." _

 

"I want to see Mr. Fox freed."

 

"Done," the Mad Hatter said.

 

"I want to watch him go up to the roof," Bruce said. He emphasized the last word, so hopefully Dick would pick up on his intentions. He heard a movement that sounded almost exactly like the drag of wind, but could've only been Dick sliding himself into position.

 

The Mad Hatter moved to push Mr. Fox through the window closest to Dick, but Bruce barked a sudden, "Not that one."

 

The Mad Hatter gave him a curious look, and then Bruce fumbled out a, "Front window. I want, uh, the police to see."

 

Bruce gave Mr. Fox a boost, guiding his legs until they found purchase and he scrambled onto the roof with a gasped, "Thank you."

 

Bruce turned to face the Mad Hatter, angling himself so Dick could sneak through the window in his shadow. The Mad Hatter grinned an evil grin, and beckoned the Jabberwock to sit in the chair at the head of the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What'd you guys think? :D


	4. SV WRW ZXGFZOOB ULITVG GSV KLMGRZX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally!

That night, Bruce had a dream. He dreamt of Gotham City. The gritty refuse flooding the streets had gone and the screams and their bloody birth had gone, and so was the murder and the lying and the stealing and the swindling, and the unkindness was gone, too. Gotham’s emergent layer reached down and spilled its sunlight into the canopy; and Gotham’s canopy reached down and spilled its sunlight into the understory; and Gotham’s understory reached down and spilled its light into the floor; and Gotham’s floor was flooded with the collective light of each. The beast with the green scales was slaughtered and his flesh was stripped and cleaned and fed the whole city, and his bones were buried beneath the willow tree. Batman lived in the grave, no longer needed.

 

Bruce was torn from his dream and flung into wakefulness.

 

“That was the dumbest thing I’ve  _ ever _ seen!” Robin—Dick—shouted, shaking Bruce by the shoulders. He was standing on the table in front of Bruce, which was strewn by shattered ceramic and shredded lace.

 

“W’rked,” Bruce mumbled. “Wh’s he.”

 

“Tetch got away,” Dick snapped. He leaned back, face pressed into his gloves. “Least Mr. Fox is fine. But holy Toledo, Batman, Tetch was going to kill you! I tried to stop ‘im, but he was just gone! Like he fell down the rabbit hole or something!”

 

“R’ly?” Bruce asked, pulling the contraption off of his head. His arm flopped down, flinging the hunk of junk to the floor. It felt as if his bones had been replaced with lead balloons.

 

“Yes, really,” Dick said. “He said he rigged it special ‘cause you fell for it last time.”

 

He pushed himself out of the chair, stumbling slightly; Dick kept a hand on his elbow to steady him.

 

“You remember anything? Your brain patched up, or what?” Dick asked, intently. "Anything at  _ all?" _

 

Bruce closed his eyes against the ache in his head. “Can’t… think. Had a dream. Beautiful dream. Why was I trying to leave?”

 

“I don’t know,” Dick said. “C’mon, we’ve gotta get out of here. The police’ll be here any minute.”

 

Dick led him back to the window, and when they heard the tread of heavy boots he practically pushed Bruce out of it. Even as distracted as Bruce was, he managed to wrap his hands around the window’s ledge and hold tight. Some slick whisper told him he’d done this before, that he’d hidden from those very boots by holding fast to wind-slapped brick, only to look up and see a beaming face—Two-Face—

 

“Aight, Bossman,” Dick said, testing the strength of a rappelling hook on the ledge, “let’s get out of here.”

 

Other memories were starting to occur to Bruce like fireflies in the dark—he used to hate catching fireflies, though he vividly remembered his father doing so, he just wanted to watch them—and on the way down he recalled rappelling in the mountains so clearly that he stumbled the rest of the way down thinking he was freezing to death.

 

Dick helped him into the Batmobile, bundling him up in the passenger's seat. When Dick hopped into the driver's seat, he said, "Don't get mad at me later when we get your head fixed for this, okay? I know I'm not supposed to drive until I have my learner's, but, pal, you look  _ wasted." _

 

In Bruce's opinion, Dick had entirely too much fun driving. But he had a memory of holding a tiny little boy outside of a circus tent, rubbing his back as he sobbed about the bloody stain on the dirt floor just visible between the legs of the crowd, so he didn’t tell Dick to slow down. 

 

-

 

They pulled themselves through the rocky entrance—which Dick was  _ really _ starting to hope Bruce would fix someday—and were met by a blank-faced Alfred Pennyworth.

 

Dick folded his hands behind his back and stared at the ground, one pixie boot tapping the stone furiously. His cheeks burned red-hot. Bruce looked between them.

 

"Did he do something wrong?" Bruce asked. “Did  _ I?” _

 

"I distinctly recall saying that Master Bruce's memories were not to be trifled with," Alfred said, calmly. He sounded like a tornado in a bottle; a barely held-back rage.

 

That was fine and well. Dick could be angry, too. 

 

"Gotham needs a Batman!" Dick exploded. "I don't know what you've got against it, Al, but you've gotta know  _ that much _ by now! We need him, whether you like it or not!"

 

Alfred's eyes turned to steel. Dick swallowed, and dropped his eyes. 

 

"Sorry, Al," he mumbled. "I shouldn't have yelled."

 

"You very well shouldn't have," Alfred snapped. "I do not conscience yelling in this household. If you have a disagreement, you will speak about it as if you are the product of generations of  _ men, _ not monkeys."

 

Dick's shoulders slumped. "Sorry."

 

Alfred sniffed. His mouth fell into a stiff line. "Apology accepted, sir. Master Bruce, if I could have you on the cot, sir."

 

"Oh. Sure," Bruce said, as if he'd been roughly pulled out of water. He picked his way over as if he'd been in the Cave a million times, and knew to avoid the hollow in the rock and to step up to the metal ledge of the medbay. The sight lifted Dick's heart.

 

Alfred turned his ice-colored eyes to Dick. The corners of his lips were folded in something almost like regret. "It is... true, that I may have been unfairly against the idea of taking... an active effort in reclaiming Master Bruce's memories."

 

_ You think,  _ Dick said to himself. But he kept his tongue bitten.

 

"It," Alfred said, and stopped, and sighed. His face was infinitely sad. "You must know I think of Master Bruce as…”

 

He didn’t finish. Dick understood anyway. 

 

Dick, behind his mask, widened his eyes. "Jeepers, Al, I didn't expect you to get all sappy on me. I thought that was Bruce's thing. Uh, don't tell him I said that."

 

_ My son. _

 

Alfred smiled wanly. "You have my word, sir."

 

Dick fidgeted. He wished he had his Rubik's cube—it helped not only when Bruce was gone, but when he was just feeling antsy.

 

"It is hard, I think," Alfred said, "to give… Master Bruce to a city that does not deserve him. I hope you'll forgive me for wanting to keep him to myself."

 

"Aw, Al," Dick murmured. He threw himself forward, wrapped his arms around Alfred's chest. He knew the old man wasn't much on hugs, but it was the only medicine Dick could offer for a wound like that, for a wound that bled as free as that. 

 

Alfred blew air out of his nose like an offended and definitely British horse. "Not until you've showered, you  _ devil." _

 

Dick squeezed him tighter. "If you  _ really _ weren't enjoying it, you'd have pushed me away by now."

 

"Nonsense. I am simply rendered defenseless by your pubescent stench."

 

Finally Dick let him go, and they checked Bruce over. Bruce kept mumbling about memories, and didn't seem to hear anything they were saying, so Dick and Alfred shared a significant look, and Alfred sent them both to bed. Probably in the hopes that sleep would jog a few memories, or that they’d stay out of trouble for once. 

 

Dick had other ideas.

 

After Alfred had disappeared for the night, Dick scrambled down the hall into Bruce’s room, tearing off the hoodie he’d hidden his uniform under.

 

“Bruce!” he whisper-hissed. “Bruce, wake up!”

 

Bruce rolled over and blinked big, watchful eyes at him. Now that was more like the Bruce he knew—quiet, furtive, weird. 

 

“It’s time for Batman school,” Dick said.

 

“That’s over,” Bruce said. “I failed. The Mad Hatter is still loose.”

 

Dick raised his brows at the name, but ignored it for the moment. “Listen, Batman. You didn’t fail because—Hatter? Really?—got away. You failed because of the hostages.”

 

“The hostages?” Bruce asked.

 

“You didn’t make sure they were guaranteed to be safe before you did something. Sometimes people get away, it happens. But you protect people before you punish evil.”

 

“This was not in the rules,” Bruce huffed, laying back against the pillows. He was wearing that ghastly pink robe again. 

 

Dick hopped on the footboard, posed with his fists resting on his hips. “You just don’t understand the rules. C’mon, let’s get your cape.”

 

Bruce’s eyes folded at the corners bashfully. “Well, actually,” he said, pulling back his robe to reveal the black-and-yellow symbol on his chest. "I... the bats. I… didn’t want to be scared of the bats. They don’t deserve my fear.” 

 

“We're getting warmer,” Dick said, offering a grin in return.

 

-

 

“If you don’t get it, it's because you don't know how to get it," Dick said, dropping out of a handstand to land on the building’s gravelly roof. He ignored the bemused tilt to Bruce's mouth.

 

Dick had chosen to take them to Old Gotham, which had maybe half the criminal activity of East End, but still took three times as long for Batman to haunt.

 

"You're gonna go through a patrol," Dick said. "It's a necessary bat-skill. Basically, you stop at every corner, every alley, every street, and wait for a while to make sure all is nice and quiet, and then you move on. You keep one ear in the police scanner, one ear checkin' for sirens, and both eyes on the ground.”

 

"What do I do?" Bruce asked.

 

"Justice," Dick said, simply.

 

-

 

He trailed Bruce's patrol route—Bruce might be regaining some of his memories, but he still wasn't Batman yet, and Dick felt the need to watch over him. Dick wondered if this was maybe how Bruce had felt about him, but Dick didn't get to linger on that thought too long, because Bruce was on the move.

 

Bruce stopped near a neighborhood basketball court and lingered on the late-night game some of the kids were playing. Dick, from a distance, recognized his friend Dominique.

 

The ball bounced off of the rim and rolled across the street, followed by a pair of white trainers in a jog. A car screamed down the road. Batman whisked the kid out of the way, and dropped him unceremoniously back on the court.

 

A few seconds later, the ball was hurled out of the alley's dark mouth, and landed deftly in the hoop.

 

Warm. 

 

-

 

Batman stopped again the next street over.

 

First, he shadowed a woman who had been carrying her keys between her fingers on her walk home, and he stopped a car robbery by crawling under the car like a cat and tripping the guy. When the robber landed with his butt flat on the ground, Batman pushed up against the car with his shoulders, making it hop up, as if haunted. The man scrambled away in fear. Then there was an old man who got lost on the way to his motel, and Batman hid in the dark and gave him directions with a disguised voice.

 

Dick smiled to himself. Warmer.

 

-

 

Two streets over, Batman found a woman sobbing on the stairs of a shambling townhouse, gingerly prodding a bleeding leg. Batman talked to her in a low voice and wrapped up her leg, and gave her the address of a women's shelter. His memory was coming back quick.

 

There was a detour after someone fell asleep at the wheel and Batman had to land on the hood of the car to wake them up, and another after Batman found a kid who had run away and took him to a children's shelter. There was an attempted assault, with two men pushing a woman up against a dumpster, but all Batman did was slither onto the hard plastic lid behind her and mouth  _ boo _ to send them running scared. The woman never even saw Batman at all.

 

Warmer.

 

-

 

On the last street, there wasn't very much for Batman to do at all. In fact, Batman just stopped by a lamppost and stood, curiously studying a sheet of paper. After a moment he ripped it off and took it to the top of a building to read, and he sat there for an hour, reading it over and over and over and over.

 

Warmest.

 

-

 

Dick wasn't surprised when Bruce found him in the Cave and said, first, before anything else, "Get out of my chair." Bossing someone around might as well have been Bruce’s bat-initiation.

 

Dick cackled. "It's my chair now."

 

"No, it's not," Bruce said, crossing his arms. "I bolted it into the ground myself."

 

"Does it have your name on it?"

 

"Sure it does."

 

"Prove it, hotshot.”

 

"After you tell me," Bruce said, laying the paper on the table, "what this is."

 

"It's a letter," Dick said.

 

"I thought it was real, at first. You’re getting good. It was a nice attempt, Dick, but I  _ don't _ like being misled," Bruce said.

 

Dick rolled his eyes. He got up and pulled a massive box from behind the monitor, and dumped it on the floor. Thousands of letters, scribbled on construction paper or notebook paper or copy paper but only ever in purple crayon, spread across the floor.

 

"Her name is Stephanie," Dick said. "She's five, and she writes her r’s backwards. She's written to you every night for a year. You've kept every single letter. I told you, you were born for this. But this? This is why.”

 

Bruce knelt down slowly, reverently, and leafed through the letters, handling them as if only his hands would cause them incalculable damage. He gathered them one-by-one in his arms, and settled down with his legs crossed. He was still there, reading, when Dick went upstairs to sneak into bed.

 

Dick just  _ knew _ it’d be the nail in the coffin.

 

That morning, Dick woke up a few feet off the ground, and squealed. “Wha—Bruce?”

 

Bruce patted his back. “Good morning. We have work to do.”

 

“Y’know, when I said, ‘Batman and Robin now and forever,’ I kinda meant  _ after _ heck-all in the morning, y’know,” Dick said. But he was grinning still. 

 

-

 

They scanned the Kirby Cola factory for any evidence they may have missed, and Dick listened to the police scanners while Batman ran through everything they’d collected. Dick played back the recording he’d taken the night before, and between the two of them they figured a list of likely places the Mad Hatter would hide in. 

 

Batman had told Robin to meet him at Tulgey Wood, a bookstore on the outskirts of Old Gotham.  _ He likes  _ Alice in Wonderland, Bruce had explained.

 

Batman had lied.

 

Robin took off through the streets on the Robincycle to Old Gotham; Batman took the Batmobile into New Gotham, through Gotham’s diamond district. 

 

“You’re late,” the Mad Hatter said with a smile. The Foxes were gathered at the table, bound and gagged, each with a cup of tea and white cake with pink trim. The helmets on their heads whirred evenly, like a swarm of bees.

 

“You’re early,” Batman growled. 

 

“Quiet, Jabberwock,” the Hatter said. He gestured expansively around the table. “They’re sleeping! Mr. Fox here has kindly agreed to give me my job back. Look, he even signed this letter!”

 

Hatter tossed an envelope at him. Batman ignored it; it was poorly forged. Hatter wasn’t really after money, which meant that the alternative was true—he believed in everything he said.

 

“I’ll spread my Wonderland to the whole world, Batman,” Hatter said, folding his gloved hands. “And you can’t do a thing, because if you dare I’ll kill them all with a press of a button. Would you like to see if I’m bluffing  _ now?” _

 

Batman remained silent.

 

Hatter chortled. “Oho! That’s what I thought, Jabberwock. And they don’t have Robins to save them, so you had best toe the line. I think you’ll be working for me now. I think you’ll like it—I think I might just test all of my better worlds out on you. You have…  _ remarkable _ resilience. If  _ you _ were the test subject… no one could escape…”

 

There was a reason he had lied to Robin.

 

“Sounds nice,” Batman said, dryly. His hands, hidden beneath his cape, slid a remote out of his belt, and he pressed the button. There was a  _ bang,  _ and the room was flooded in darkness. “Would sound nicer if you didn’t have to plug those in.”

 

The Foxes began to stir. Before they could focus their eyes, Batman leapt over the table, hooked an arm around Hatter’s short, fat body, and threw them both through the window in a spiral shower of glass. Below them, police officers, tipped off ‘anonymously’, were gathered around like an army of ants.

 

Hatter screamed, and Batman fired his grappling hook, pulling them both upwards and onto the roof. 

 

“D-Don’t kill me!” Hatter squealed. “I just wanted a better world! You said—you said  _ you’d _ dreamed of a better world! A  _ perfect _ world! I could give you that, honest, I can give it to everyone—if they’d just  _ listen!” _

 

“A perfect world,” Batman rumbled.

 

Hatter clapped his hands together, his eyes turning wild and fevered. “Yes! Yes! Everyone wants it—look at how soundly they sleep! Everyone except… you… don’t you want a better world, Batman? Don’t you want a  _ perfect _ world?”

 

“Yes,” Batman said, simply.

 

Hatter shrieked wordlessly, before launching into another fevered diatribe: “Then do you  _ want _ to be unhappy? Is that it!? Is being the Batman just about endless  _ suffering?” _

 

“Yes.”

 

Hatter stopped. His glassy green eyes were hopelessly round and hopelessly lost. Batman took the opportunity to grab him by the neck, and force him to look out at Gotham City. 

 

“The way to make a perfect world,” Batman said, “isn’t to run away from it. It’s to face it and  _ change _ it.”

 

Hatter gulped. 

 

Batman forced his head down, to stare past Gotham’s emergent layer, through its canopy, through its understory, and finally to its floor. “Look at it. Look at how people are scared to walk down the street—look at the woman in the red jacket running, the man shushing his child. Look at how people are hurt. I can’t be happy until they are, and when they’re all happy Batman will die. Until then, I live forever.” 

 

And with that, he left the Mad Hatter bound and gagged for the police, and flew home. The Mad Hatter watched him until he disappeared and still for some time after that. 

 

There were a few hours of the night left, but he hadn’t gotten a chance to work on those bat-ears, and it’d be his last night with the kittens before he dropped them off at a shelter in the morning. The GCPD could hold. 

 

Robin would be there, undoubtedly, waiting for him like always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaand it's on to the next one for me! ;) ;) I hope you guys are prepared....

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed it! Any questions, comments, concerns, and/or love letters ;) can go below, or I have an email on my profile, or I have a tumblr connected to my profile. Pick your poison. 
> 
> Chapters will be posted daily, barring any Sudden Turn Of Life on my part :)
> 
> (and what was up with those titles, JD? they're so weird ;))))))))) )


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